el, guarding the treasures of
the hills, had jealously barred the way, that no one else from the world
of men might follow.

Aaron King stopped. Drawing a deep breath, and removing his hat, he turned
his face from that mountain wall, upward to the encircling pine-fringed
ridges and towering peaks. He had, indeed, come far from the world that he
had always known.

Conrad Lagrange, smiling, watched his friend, but spoke no word.

Clear Creek Canyon is a deep, narrow valley, some fifteen miles in length,
and approaching a mile in its greatest width; lying between the main range
of the San Bernardinos and the lower ridge of the Galenas. The lower end
of the canyon is shut in by the sheer cliff walls, and by the rugged
portals of the narrow entrance; the upper end is formed by the dividing
ridge that separates the Clear Creek from the Cold Water country which
opens out onto the Colorado Desert below San Gorgonio Pass and the peaks
of the San Jacintos. Perhaps two miles above the entrance the canyon
widens to its greatest width; and in this portion of the little
valley,--which extends some five miles to where the walls again draw
close,--located on the benches above the boulder-strewn wash of Clear
Creek, are the homes of several mountain ranchers, and the Government
Forest Ranger Station.

At the Ranger Station, they stopped--Conrad Lagrange wishing to greet the
mountaineer official, whom he had learned to know on his former trip. But
the Ranger was away somewhere, riding his lonely trails, and they did not
tarry.

Just above the Station, they left the main road to follow the way that
leads to the Morton Ranch in the mouth of Alder Canyon--a small side
canyon leading steeply up to a low gap in the main range. Beyond Morton's,
there is only a narrow trail. Three hundred yards above the ranch corral,
where the road ends and the trail begins, the buildings of the
mountaineer's home were lost to view. Except for the narrow winding path
that they must follow single file, there was no sign of human life.

For three weeks, they knew no roads other than those lonely, mountain
trails. At times, they walked under dark pines where the ground was
thickly carpeted with the dead, brown needles and the air was redolent
with the odor of the majestic trees; or made their camps at night, feeding
their blazing fires with the pitchy knots and cones. At other times, they
found their way through thickets of manzanita and buckthorn, along th